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Oct 11 18 tweets 7 min read Read on X
The Nazca Lines are an amazing sight to see.

It took nearly a century to figure out just 430 of these Nazca geoglyphs, but now AI nearly doubled the number overnight, adding 303 new geoglyphs to our knowledge.

AI might've also revealed why the Nazca lines were constructed!🧵 Image
For background, the Nazca lines are a set of exceptionally well-preserved geoglyphs and walking routes that exist in the agriculturally-unsuitable Nazca Pampa region.

The traditionally-known lines seem to depict things that make sense. For example, here's a spider: Image
Line construction is a practice from the region that's at least 2,000 years old and it results in lots of very interpretable pictures, like this monkey: Image
The lines have been classified into many types.

It's believed that the different types are distributed in geographically distinct areas, created in different times, and most obviously, that they have different meanings. Image
The new lines discovered by AI are a bit harder for humans to understand or pick out, but when the AI points them out, it becomes apparent we were overlooking them, perhaps because they're so weird and foreign to us

They're also older and smaller than known ones. Take a look: Image
These newly-discovered Nazca lines depict very figurative rather than literal shapes, but they also depict ritual, and maybe even lawgiving or war.

These lines are weird precisely because they had to be distinct to suit their purpose.

I'll come back to this. Image
The new lines were found by the AI like so.

The AI highlighted certain areas as being particularly 'line-like' (A), and then the researchers visually inspected the photographs the AI had been provided (B).

After the AI pointed it out, it was often clear something was there. Image
This exercise was repeated over and over again throughout the whole region between Lima and Nazca, leading to a lot of new targets. Image
The team then set out on foot and by drone to see if the lines were real, in-person.

Real lines are clearly dug into the ground and often contain artefacts like pottery shards and such.

The AI found them and the humans confirmed them. Image
A very large number of these new discoveries went overlooked for so long because they were reliefs.

Reliefs are less distinct in the landscape, but are still persistent, like the better-known lines. They also depict different things than the lines do: Image
When you look at the reliefs, you'll see evidence of ancient domestication and lawgiving or warring.

The lines, however, more often just depict an animal. Why might they be so different? It's not like the complexity differed all that much. Image
Here's the meat:

What makes these lines so interesting is that the AI makes it clear that they had distinct purposes.

The relief-type lines that show people and such? Well, those mark trail-heads. They're less distinct because you're intended to be close to them! Image
If you wanted to navigate across the region, you could walk until you saw a certain relief, and then you'd know what trail to take!

Critically, this network was informal. The state, however, made a formal network leading to the Cahuachi Pyramids, which were a ceremonial center. Image
The lines rather than reliefs are younger because they're associated with state formation/organization.

The region's state co-opted the informal, cultural practice of making reliefs for navigation in order to set up the line network to get to and be seen from the temple complex! Image
And there we have it! We might now know the purpose of and who funded the Nazca lines. (Thanks, AI!)

To review, there's an old, informal line network used for navigation. You walk up a trail, you see a relief. The number of these known just blew up due to AI.
The old informal line network where you see a relief then you go down the right trail was formalized by the region's state to create massive lines, sharp breaks that are more obvious from a distance

These lead to and support the temple complex, facilitating worship/organization Image
And guess what? With the power of AI, we're just getting started.

The authors of the study said that there are more than 250 additional geoglyphs flagged by the AI, which they didn't have the time to examine in person.

What else will we learn about this ancient civilization? Image
If you want to read the study, you can do so here: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

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More from @cremieuxrecueil

Oct 27
I'm not going to rig an ongoing poll by linking directly to it, but I will say that >90% of respondents so far were wrong:

The answer is climate🧵 Image
Anatomically modern humans first appeared around 200,000 years ago.

After a few false starts, the dawn of man took place with a series of dispersions out of Africa about 60,000 years ago.

By 40-50 thousand years ago, humans had made it most places, and by 10-20, to the Americas Image
Practically all of that time dispersing took place as hunter-gatherers.

Specifically, nomadic hunter-gatherers. The real advent that made agriculture possible wasn't changing the mode of subsistence per se, but changing to sedentism.Image
Read 16 tweets
Oct 27
What does labor-saving technology do to workers? Does it make them poor? Does it take away their jobs?

Let's review!

First: Most papers do support the idea that technology takes people's jobs.Image
This needs qualified.

Most types of job-relevant technology do take jobs, but innovation is largely excepted, because, well, introducing a new innovation tends to, instead, give employers money they can use to hire people. Image
But if technology takes jobs, why do we still have jobs?

Simple: Because through stimulating production and demand, it also reinstates laborers!

This is supported by the overwhelming majority of studies:Image
Read 12 tweets
Oct 26
I just read one of the most interesting climatic reconstructions I've ever seen.

This one gives us temperature records for the last 485 MILLION years. Image
The reconstruction is based on a lot of different methods, but the one that really stood out was the part where they leveraged the shell chemistry of single-celled organisms' fossils.

Wild that this is possible and someone thought of it! Image
With these little organisms' data in hand, it's possible to obtain a high-fidelity picture of the past in which we emerged on the global scene.

That picture is one that averages much, much colder than basically any other period in time. Image
Read 7 tweets
Oct 25
Nighttime America in 1992 and 2013.

You can see the increase in prosperity in the extent of nighttime lights🧵 Image
Compared to America, Africa didn't get much brighter between 1992 and 2013. Image
Some of the most globally notable increases in nighttime luminosity have taken place in China. Image
Read 10 tweets
Oct 22
I suspect "The Sort" can greatly increase your exposure to time-wasting incompetence🧵 Image
The obvious example of how The Sort exposes you to incompetence is that nowadays, competent people don't go into the public sector all that often.

This is a mixed bag: while the government is a poor use of human capital, it needs some to avoid holding back the rest of society.Image
There are also a lot of fairly menial service sector jobs that you'll run into all the time, and these are less obviously, but no less problematized by The Sort. Image
Read 15 tweets
Oct 17
"What happened in 1971?"

Nothing, that's just a common year people choose to mismeasure productivity and pay series from🧵 Image
Using nonfinancial corporate sector productivity and wages, we see the same picture indicating no stark divergence in 1971. Image
Simply using value-added and total compensation for the nonfarm business sector, you get a similar picture. Once again, 1971 is not special. Image
Read 7 tweets

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